1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus and a recording/reproducing method for recording data onto a magnetic recording medium and reproducing the recorded data therefrom.
2. Description of the Related Art
So-called streaming tape drives are known as drive apparatuses capable of recording/reproducing digital data onto/from magnetic tapes. Although it depends on a tape length of a tape cassette as a medium, such streaming tape drives can be provided with an enormous recording capacity of, for example, about several ten to several hundred gigabytes. Therefore, the streaming tape drives are widely used for backing up data recorded on media such as a hard disk of a computer main body, for example. Moreover, the streaming tape drives are suited for use in saving image data and the like having a large data size.
In such streaming tape drives, high-density recordings are enabled by carrying out a recording/reproducing scan by a helical scanning method using a magnetic head on a rotary drum, while running a tape in a state where the magnetic tape is wound around the rotary drum at a predetermined lap angle and rotating the rotary drum. Thus, as is well known already, data is recorded on the magnetic tape such that tracks each formed to have a predetermined tilt angle with respect to a longitudinal direction of the magnetic tape are formed continuously.
Moreover, in the streaming tape drives, an operation called read-after-write is carried out during recording, and whether data has been recorded onto the magnetic tape normally is monitored in block units. For example, immediately after data is written to the magnetic tape, the written data is read and compared with original data, and if the original data and the read data do not match, it is judged as a write failure, and rewrite that involves redoing the writing is then carried out. Accordingly, data can be recorded onto the recording medium while avoiding partial deficient parts (see, Japanese Patent No. 3829741).